Samsung Galaxy Tab Return Rate Reported To Be 16%

The Samsung Galaxy Tab is selling quite well and it seems to be a viable option if you aren’t into the iPad and other tablet solutions. Despite the cheers coming from Samsung with higher than expected sales, ITG Investment Research has found that by the end of January 2011, 16 percent of all Galaxy Tab purchases were eventually returned.

“Consumers aren’t in love with the device,” ITG Consumer tech analyst Tony Berkman said to the New York Post.

The number has increased from 13 percent before the holiday season, meaning that recipients are returning a lot of units that were given as gifts. In fact, at CES a friend of mine bought a Galaxy Tab off a local resident and when asked why she was selling it, she mentioned that it was a gift and didn’t particularly care for it.

Samsung has issued somewhat weak rebuttal to the 16 percent return rate reports by stating:

The return rate of the Galaxy Tab in the US as claimed by an North American market research firm is incorrect.

According to Samsung Electronics Mobile Communications Business the return rate is below 2 percent.

Who knows how Samsung is calculating the returns considering when they said the Tab had sold 2 million units they were talking about in channel units sold to resellers, not actual end user sales.

To put this return rate into perspective, the Verizon iPad return rate is a minuscule two percent. Analysts are trying to figure out the reason for the discrepancy, and most are blaming the fact that the Galaxy Tab runs on the Android 2.2 Froyo platform.  While Froyo has been popular on mobile phones, Google itself has said multiple times it was not meant to run a tablet, so it appears that the user experience is suffering.

Ezra Gottheil, senior analyst of Technology Business Research, thinks Samsung rushed the product to market without the user experience being perfect. “If you want to get a device out — if you’re [a manufacturer] — do you have to go with what’s available right now or do you wait for the next generation to come out?” said Gottheil. “That’s the issue Samsung and other manufacturers run into.”

What are your thoughts on the Galaxy Tab? Have you run into any instances where the interface performance was unacceptable? I know the TechnoBuffalo readers will give their honest opinions.